Cutting Room for July 19

by Ryan Syrek

Who better to judge movies than folks who know books?! Film Streams (filmstreams.org) just announced that the curators of the 2013 Local Filmmakers Showcase (Oct. 17-24) will be Jackson Street Booksellers. Last year, Omaha-based band The Faint curated, which leads me to hope for a slammin’ dance album from Jackson Street Booksellers. Not that local filmmakers from Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota would ever stoop to such a thing, but I’m pretty sure if you manage a wink and nod to reading, maybe in the vein of using the theme from “Reading Rainbow,” it can’t hurt your chances.

Speaking of the union betwixt movies and books: people be lovin’ the novel “Gone Girl,” which is one of those murder books. David Fincher, the go-to guy for lady-driven murder movies, is directing the adaptation, with Ben Affleck playing the husband. The front-runner for the titular role is Rosamund Pike, who forgettably co-starred in Jack Reacher and hopefully more memorably stars in the upcoming At World’s End. I know nothing about the book, so I’m just going to guess Affleck did it. And I don’t mean his character. I mean my guess is Ben Affleck did it.

After making enough money from his new Avengers 2 contract to buy a country (and not an obscure one…he can buy France if he wants), Robert Downey Jr is nobody’s puppet but his own. And maybe that’s why he’s set to play both Pinocchio and Gepetto in the upcoming, Ben Stiller-directed retelling of the knotty piece of wood who wants to be a real boy. Downey is a charmer, but also unquestionably an egotist; thus, it can’t really get more meta than watching him costar with himself in a film where he creates himself and saves himself.

Cutting Room provides breaking local and national movie news … complete with added sarcasm. Send any relevant information to film@thereader.com. Check out Ryan on Movieha!, a weekly half-hour movie podcast (movieha.libsyn.com/rss), catch him on the radio on CD 105.9 (cd1059.com) on Fridays at around 7:30 a.m. and on KVNO 90.7 (KVNO.org) at 8:30 a.m. on Fridays and follow him on Twitter (twitter.com/thereaderfilm).

posted at 09:29 am
on Friday, July 19th, 2013

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